Skip to main content

Intel awards five more laptops with Project Athena badges

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Project Athena is Intel’s way of verifying and marketing specific laptops, and ahead of IFA 2019, the company has expanded the program to include some more devices.

The first verified systems, the HP EliteBook x360 1040 and 830, will be joined by the Dell Inspiron 14 5000, Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1, Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. These laptops will now be sold with a new badge that says “Engineered for Mobile Performance.” It’s not the most pithy phrase in the world, but it’s meant to communicate Intel’s closer involvement with the design and experience of the product.

In a press release, Intel included a quote from some merchants getting behind the marketing effort, including Costco and Best Buy.

According to Costco, “Project Athena-based laptops are what our members desire with improved performance, instant on, intelligence, better battery life and improved connectivity, all in new, beautiful, sleek form factors. We’re excited to partner with Intel to be at the forefront of PC innovation.”

What does this badge actually mean? Well, Intel opened up labs in Taipei, Shanghai, and Folsom, California to test systems for a few specific performance qualifications. General performance and low-power optimization is what Intel is looking for as it attempts to push the industry toward thinner designs, extended battery life, and fast performance.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Intel says the verified components include “solid-state drives, touch controllers, embedded controllers, and display panels, which can often have the greatest effect on a device’s performance and power consumption.”

Elsewhere, Intel claims Project Athena verifies six “innovation vectors,” which include “instant action, performance and responsiveness, intelligence, battery life, connectivity, and form factor.” That’s quite a wide variety of areas, covering most of the important aspects of a high-end laptop. If manufacturers want the new badge, they’re expected to align the systems with Intel’s specifications. This is only the first year of what is supposed to be a multiyear project for Intel, and is akin to its push for the Ultrabook designation in the 2000s.

The rollout of Project Athena also coincides nicely with Intel’s launch of its new 10th-gen mobile processors. This year’s processors are split into two distinct lines: 14nm Comet Lake and 10nm Ice Lake, though the choice of processors doesn’t seem to affect whether or not a laptop is awarded with the new badge.

Editors' Recommendations

Luke Larsen
Senior Editor, Computing
Luke Larsen is the Senior editor of computing, managing all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, Macs, and more.
Asus launches an Intel HX business laptop — and it looks like a beast
The ExpertBook B6 on a mixing board.

Asus has announced three new devices in its ExpertBook line of business laptops during the IFA tech conference, including a non-gaming laptop that uses Intel's 12th-gen HX processors.

The laptop in question is the ExpertBook B6 Flip, which the brand describes as a mobile workstation, intended for power users and professionals including architects, engineers, and product designers.

Read more
Intel processors may get a lot more expensive, giving AMD an edge
A render of an Intel Core HX chip.

According to a new report, Intel might be about to introduce a substantial pricing increase on the majority of its catalog. Unfortunately, this also includes consumer-level processors. The company cites an increase in production and material cost as the reason why it decided to up its prices.

For the customers, it all comes down to one thing -- PC hardware and pre-built desktops and laptops might get a lot more expensive. The two key questions are: How much worse will the prices get, and how will Intel's competitors respond to this decision?

Read more
Why Intel Meteor Lake could pack a lot more punch for the same power
14th-generation Intel processor.

Intel has just given us a much larger glimpse into its future Meteor Lake lineup. At the 2022 IEEE VLSI Symposium, the company talked about the 14th generation of its processors, detailing the future process node and the improvements the new Intel 4 process should bring.

The teaser certainly sounds promising. Intel claims that Meteor Lake CPUs will provide 20% higher clock speeds than the previous generations, all while maintaining the same power requirements.

Read more